


secrets

by themissinglenk



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin
Genre: M/M, ah adolescence, from tumblr, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 06:40:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themissinglenk/pseuds/themissinglenk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two lies did not make a truth, and neither of them could have figured out that Jean and Eren had a deal. // from tumblr, open prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	secrets

Jean Kirschtein was a man.

First it was Mikasa that had made his heart wrestle against his ribcage, fluttering violently.

And Sasha hadn’t been that bad until she’d opened her mouth.

And there was something sort of hot about the way Annie could kick a guy’s ass.

But—there was something even better about laying in his bunk at night while all the other guys wrestled and whispered and kicked the one guilty one who farted in his sleep (because there was always one)—laying there, skin hot and stomach in knots, imagining what it would be like to run his thumbs over _his_ lower lip, feel the tempting ridge of _his_ teeth on the other side, stroke a knuckle up _his_ hairless cheek and over the hot shell of _his_ ear, and taste _his_ gasp and feel the press of _his_ chest, ripe virility, and grind hard together where the hard-on struggled against the fly of the trousers.

There was something thrilling about it in a secret shamefaced way, the thrill of the forbidden, the brazen illicit, the getting away with breaking the rules type of adrenaline rush—like jacking off in a dorm full of your friends and comrades and fellow trainees, toes curling and moans bitten back as you wondered just how many of the others did the same thing, mastering the motion and the gritting of the teeth—

Something just very different about it, and in that way Jean decided it wasn’t bad at all. Just the tail side of a coin, like hate and love were two sides of the same emotion. Or so his mother had always parabolized.

Jean never really suspected anyone could tell. That is, if they did they wouldn’t say anything because everyone did it, in privacy, imagined things they couldn’t speak of in the daylight because the sun saw the body but the moon saw the soul.

But Armin saw it, apparently, and he was a lot ballsier than Jean had made him out to be, judging by the way he snuck up on him behind the dorms during the rec hour one afternoon, when the mountains looked particularly jagged and unforgiving and the sky was a flawless mother-of-pearl.

“I know,” he declared, anxiously, eyes skittish and shoulders rigid as he struggled to get it all out before anyone interrupted.

“You know what?” Jean scoffed, and when he shuffled a step or two back from Armin’s jabbing finger, it kicked up little clouds and pebbles from the cold dry ground.

“That you like Eren,” Armin clarified, all wide-eyed and pinched like this was something men could discuss in private, fine print in the rules of brotherhood. The masquerade of manhood, protecting what the world saw as weak. The kind of things you whispered about in the bunks at night but didn’t hold against one another until the wrong words slipped in a scuffle or something and then you had to choke out an apology because you’d broken holy boy code. _Faggot!_ _I mean… I’m sorry…_

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jean husked, joining in on Armin’s shuffle-step jig of paranoia. “I don’t like Eren. He drives me batshit—”

“I’m smart, Jean.” Armin said it with all the feel of a threat; clearly questionable sexuality was nothing new to him. Maybe he’d been hanging out with Reiner too much. “I’m a boy, too. Girls don’t understand the fighting and yelling but I do and I see the way you look at him.”

Right, because envying a psycho’s fearless passion was so suspicious. As long as he didn’t have to say it aloud…

“He’s with Mikasa,” Armin whispered, avoiding Jean’s terse glance. “They’re… _together_. So you don’t really have a chance…”

But see, the poetic part was that Armin didn’t know about what Mikasa said.

It doubled the shame because it was _Mikasa_ , that _goddess_ , that perfect untouchable _queen_ —and she cornered Jean behind the dorms during after dinner one evening, a graveyard of stars swimming overhead. Shoved him right up against the building and spoke in a low, even tone, looking him dead in the eye:

“Don’t even think about it.”

Jean was lost. He stumbled over the words, first because she smelled good and second because she terrified him. “What? What are you talking about? What did I do?”

“If Eren ever entangled himself with a man, he’d entangle himself with Armin,” Mikasa said firmly.

“Okay, something really stinks like jealousy about this whole thing here,” Jean tried to interject, but Mikasa cut him off with one last final blow. And he listened because he loved her voice and he listened because she’d probably elbow him in the jugular if he didn’t shut his mouth immediately.

“I know how you boys work. You fight and you yell and that’s the same thing as romance to the male breed, for whatever reason. My point is, he’s ours, and if you more than idolize him, you have to go through us. And if you did, and you ended up hurting him, you’d be in a new world of pain. You mess with him, you mess with us. I thought I’d warn you so you’d have time to reconsider your silly little crush and evaluate if it’s actually worth it.”

 _He’s ours_.

God, she was so beautiful and cruel.

It was funny—and by _funny_ Jean meant _fucking stupid_ —how things like who was kissing who and who stared too long at who actually mattered in a God damn military training camp. There were more important lessons to be learned, and rules to heed, and techniques to perfect, than tonsil hockey and territory wars. But see, for Armin and Mikasa—and this occurred to Jean in a moment of blissful insight, which came few and far between for a young man cursed with the trenches of self-doubt parading as overbearing logic—it made sense that intimacy and crushes were so damn vital to them because of What Had Happened.

Everyone knew What Had Happened and everyone knew they were only there for that suicidal bastard, and God, what was it like to have two people throw their lives away for you while you stormed around big and bad and didn’t even know it? Wasn’t that a crushing guilt? Was Eren really so fucking selfish and radical that he couldn’t see it? The way they took possession over him and lunged like wolves governed by pack mentality when that possession was threatened?  

Or maybe it was just that they were _all_ like that—every one of them, the entire 104th—desperate for a sense of normalcy that courtship and secret kisses and holding hands under the table in the mess hall brought. Maddened by the chance to feel young and innocent again, and close to someone, and alive, really alive, with a purpose that had nothing to do with blades and battles and starvation and potential extinction of the human race.

This was the really poetic part.

Not that Armin and Mikasa had both been unaware of their separate and supposedly sneaky counsels behind each other’s backs, no, but that—little did they know—when the night patrol was adequately distracted and curfew could be breached—Eren came tumbling through the broken window in one of the storage sheds where Jean was already waiting impatiently in the dark.

And Eren usually didn’t even say _Hi_ or _Sorry for being late_ or any other nicety like that, but the slam of his body and the crushing heat of his hungry mouth and the rough grabbing of his wandering hands sufficed, and they cleaved together staggering over coiled rope and stacked tools. Fingertips, dusting feverish skin under a tattered shirt. Dipping below the hipbones into the fiery heat at the front of the pants. The sun knew the body; the moon knew the soul; and Eren tasted like a tear when he came, body rocking against Jean’s.

“Don’t give me that stupid look, you make me wanna punch you—”

“Eat shit!”

“Clever, Jäger. Thanks for bruising my mouth, by the way.”

“You can’t bruise with kisses, idiot.”

“Look, look…ah, stop that…”

“God, I fucking hate your face—just—kiss me again—”

“Come here—”

“Just hold me for a sec, okay?”

“Tomorrow night, yeah?”

“Yeah…”

No, Armin didn’t know about Mikasa’s warning. Mikasa didn’t know about Armin’s deterring attempts. Two lies did not make a truth, and neither of them could have figured out that Jean and Eren had _a deal_.

Because Eren was just that type of idealistic wild child, whispering against Jean’s temple in the dark that it made him feel so alive, and it was the purest type of bond, and he did these things with Armin and Mikasa, too, and when the world was balanced precariously on the end of its own days, there was no time for flowers and dates, just these violent and passionate assignations, raw primal acts of natural connection, souls shivering on the same planes under the moon, the realm of the id—

Because Marco was the one Jean thought about when he was laying in bed. Marco was the one he caught himself staring at. Marco was the one whose lips he watched when he spoke, whose back he admired during training, whose laughter crawled under his skin and made a nest there, invading him from the inside out. And Marco liked him, too. Jean was sure of it. He was just waiting for the night Marco rolled over and turned those puppy-dog eyes up on him, all freckles and hot blush and awkward hands and nudging knees, looking up and choking on his breath as he finally caved: “Jean, _kiss me_ …”

Jean would. And maybe Marco would even whisper on his lower lip, “I’ll be yours forever,” just like Eren could never be his because he was Armin and Mikasa’s forever.

And Jean thought he’d be perfectly okay with that.  
  


**_end._ **


End file.
